THE TITLED BOOK IS PART of a trilogy, and it’s hard to say it’s the “first” part since Robert Anton Wilson wrote Schrodinger’s Cat such that the reader can open any of its constituents (The Universe Next Door, The Trick…
Tag: reading
The whole and entire purpose for Writing (outside of its own).
First Graf: Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead
THIS MOST ELEGANT OF STOPPARD plays is, I think, best viewed live — the 1990 film, for all its polish, loses something as it’s translating. Live it should be: for “live” is what it’s about, and specifically but not exclusively:…
First Graf: The DQ of UK
THIS TITLE DOESN’T REFER TO either German nobility, soft ice cream or the British Isles, but the first paragraph (“graf” in news-speak) of one of my favorite novellae, H.P. Lovecraft‘s The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath. Though mostly famous for his…
Harvey Pekar Z”TL
A MOMENT OF SILENCE WOULD be inappropriate to mark the death this morning of autobiographer, comix legend and music critic Harvey Pekar, since (depending on your view) the former Cleveland Heights resident is right now either a) arguing with “God,”…
5 Thoughts: Fiction- v. News-Writing
1. YOU STOP WRITING A NEWS piece when you run out of facts. But when do you stop writing fiction? When you run out of story, I suppose. 2. In news, the most important information goes up top. In fiction,…
Pithyism #1440
RESEARCH THROUGH BOOKS WALKS A vast flagstone patio; online research is a path laid stone by stone.
Pithyism #2.35
THE FIRST TIME, YOU SEE/READ/HEAR IT for the story; the second time for nuance; third (and thereafter) is sheer love of craft.
Jon Stewart Slams Glenn Beck Idol
THE DEMISE OF THE HEADLINE-WRITER’S art (according to a recent article fed through both Slashdot and The Daily Beast) dictates an appeal to search engine optimization (SEO) instead of readers — something that snags on Google instead of anticipatory imagination.…
See, This Is Why I Love Jack Vance
IT’S NOT THAT HE RENDERS whole worlds so vividly and so succinctly, peopling vast and history-thick galaxies with one or two spare sentences. It’s not the cinematic sweep of his prose, which respects his readers’ visual imagination by meeting it…
Journalism As Art Imitating Life
CAN WRITERS REPORT? THAT QUESTION nets a “yes” according to Daniel Elstrin in the June 19 Forward, reporting on the day Haaretz (think Israeli NYT) swapped its staff for 31 leading authors and poets: “Among those articles were gems like…
Happy Bloomsday!
105 YEARS AGO TODAY, LEO Bloom took his famous fictive walk through Dublin seeing the same places and eating the same foods as his latterday followers did, will do or have done today. (Me, I’ll be sitting on the floor…
Paul Williams Support Fund
IF YOU PASSED THROUGH THE 1970s and ’80s, you likely read his Das Energi, his rock criticism, or his Philip K. Dick scholarship. Now he, like so many, needs our help.